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As industries begin to see humans working closely with robots, there’s a need to ensure that the relationship is effective, smooth and beneficial to humans. Robot trustworthiness and humans’ willingness to trust robot behavior are vital to this working relationship. However, capturing human trust levels can be difficult due to subjectivity, a challenge researchers at Texas A&M University aim to solve.

As they traverse the air, land, or sea, encountering one another or other obstacles, autonomous vehicles will need to talk to each other. Even cars with actual drivers could benefit from the ability to work together to avoid calamity and assure efficiency. Temporary, ad hoc networks will form around sets of vehicles and the onboard sensors and communications technology that allow them to navigate; they will interact, enabling them all to “see” one another and react accordingly.

Comau and Siemens have presented several application cases to demonstrate the concrete ability of Siemens PLCs to communicate at an industrial level with Comau robot controllers. The event was held at the MADE – Competence Center Industry 4.0 in Milan, created to support and accompany Italian manufacturing companies on the path of technological innovation and digital transformation.

For decades researchers have worked to design robotic hands that mimic the dexterity of human hands in the ways they grasp and manipulate objects. However, these earlier robotic hands have not been able to withstand the physical impacts that can occur in unstructured environments. A research team has now developed a compact robotic finger for dexterous hands, while also being capable of withstanding physical impacts in its working environment.

A gripper robot has been developed that can grasp all types of objects, from very fine or thin objects such as acupuncture needles and sewing needles to large objects such as boxes.

Robotics provider Mujin has debuted its latest product, QuickBot, a robot cell for case handling. The first application to become available is a depalletizing solution for automating the receiving process in warehouses.

Self-driving company Argo AI, is closing down after Ford and VW announced that the companies would be ending their investments in the self-driving company. “Profitable, fully autonomous vehicles at scale are a long way off,” CEO Jim Farley said in a statement.

Innodisk, provider of industrial storage, has officially announced a new development strategy focusing on the AI market, and also launched the “Innodisk AI” Solution at a press conference in Taipei, Taiwan. Innodisk has amassed more than 1,000 cases worldwide since the business expand to AIoT in 2017. In the coming years Innodisk will continue to extend its ecosystem alliance, and expand its focus on AI development with subsidiaries, as well as its partners Intel, NVIDIA, Microsoft and ASUS IoT.

Sarcos Technology and Robotics Corporation  has executed field trials for shipyard operations at the Naval Base Ventura County. The Company performed field tests on the ground and at height using a suite of Sarcos solutions, including the Guardian DX teleoperated dexterous robot for defense; the Sapien 6M dexterous robot; the Sapien Sea Class underwater robot; and the Guardian S remote visual inspection robot.

Oracle and NVIDIA announced a multi-year partnership on AI. The collaboration aims to bring the full NVIDIA accelerated computing stack — from GPUs to systems to software — to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI).